A Tale of Two Children

Steve Stajich
Mirror contributing writer

   Sit back and wait long enough and the wondrous systems of media in our times will deliver all the myth, irony, pathos, drama and heartbreak one human can reasonably be expected to absorb. To wit, the tales of two children, recently spilling forth from the cornucopia.
   "Frozen Baby Recovering Nicely." In four words, your heart sinks and then rises again. And then there's the curiosity. How does a baby end up frozen? Being in Canada in February is certainly part of it. "The toddler, clad only in a diaper, wandered from the home where she had been sleeping with her mother and her two year-old sister and was found outside at 3 a.m. Saturday."
   Maybe more will be have been learned about the exact circumstances of the case by the time you read this, but for now let's assume that nobody plans to have a 13 month-old child get up in the middle of the night and head out into the world. You fall asleep with your charges snuggled next to you and you feel that the dangerous world will be kept at bay at least until morning. 
   The baby fell face down into the snow outside the house, in minus 10 degree below zero cold. When she was found, she was considered clinically dead. Her toes were frozen together. Medics couldn't get a breathing tube down her throat because her mouth was frozen shut. Her heart had stopped. Doctors explained that her "miracle" survival, apparently without brain damage, was due to the fact that her tiny body cooled so quickly that her organs and blood were preserved. Being a baby saved her. 
In another part of North America, a quite different tale of a child wandering out in the dangerous world. This one does not have a happy ending. Here, the sinking feeling never moves off or changes into something else. It just sits with you. 
   David Attias, an 18 year-old from Santa Monica who was a freshman at UC Santa Barbara, was described by students who had contact with him as someone who often acted strangely. People knew he was troubled. He talked about "random things." He was "always fidgeting." He looked "kind of whacked out." He would barge into rooms or invite himself into the meals of others in the cafeteria. 
   Consider that, in these ways, he also got up in the middle of the night and wandered out. Out of his happiness or a rational state of mind. Into the frozen cold that became loneliness, despair and finally tragedy. 
   As of this writing, police say that drugs and alcohol may have contributed to his mental state on Friday, February 23, when, while driving a black Saab, he mowed down five young people walking on a residential street in a neighborhood next to the UCSB campus. Four died and a fifth was in critical condition. Attias has been charged with four counts of murder.
   Those children, the victims hit by the car Attias was driving, were simply out in the world. Walking, perhaps talking of what their futures in that world might be. Moving toward them, a child who needed something important that the world or life had not yet provided. Some missing element that might have kept him out of that car that night. A moment of contact or counsel or engagement that might have told his mind that the experience of life had the potential to be something other than what he was feeling at that moment. 
   It's not necessary to go fishing for conclusions in the David Attias tragedy. They will reveal themselves in the next few months. But more troubling than what we might learn from more revelations is the grim reality of what is confirmed by the basic facts of the event. Children lose their way, they wander in one form or another, and maybe a miracle intervenes. Or, maybe it does not. 
   In times of clarity about this, we search for more ways to be protective but we always come up short. The machinery of the world that produces the threats is constantly at work, cranking out new dangers. We teach our children not to talk to strangers at the earliest possible age. Later, with only good intentions in our hearts, we buy them the computers that they use to make connections on the Internet. Connections that sometimes lead to walking out the front door and wandering. 
   We want to believe we're staying on top of these threats, but there's no amount of time and energy that can properly anticipate the next thing lying in wait. We wring our hands over the images and dour landscapes of Eminem's music, concerned that dark thoughts will lead to dark actions. But Eminem is not the lord and master of that darkness. That darkness has myriad other ways of coming in from out there. 
   I'm not a parent and part of what has kept me from the experience is the feeling one gets when you realize that the battle to protect your children is always just a best effort, not a lock or a guarantee. There is no real insurance, no such thing as a "safety seat" in later years, no promise that there won't be heartbreak. I am always enamored of those who have the courage it takes to brave that fearsome landscape. 
   Let the available armies use these tales to fortify their positive efforts. There is the army of the children's guardians: Parents, teachers, politicians, and yes, merchants. Of "entertainment" or drugs or weapons or cigarettes. And then there're the rest of us. If we hear something, we should react. It might be as overt as a young man sending clear signals for help, or as subtle as tiny feet in the snow. Out there, in this world that we share. 

This Week's "Know Your News" Quiz

(1) The city of Ventura hopes the arrest of some Hell's Angels will
   (a) shed its image as a motorcycle 
   gang town.
   (b) reduce nuisance calls from 
   Skeeter's Tattoo Paradise.
   (c) stop "rumbles" between the Angels 
   and area podiatrists. 

(2) Recent debate over the need for SATs in  college admission has
   (a) given OJ Simpson a shot at night 
   courses.
   (b) invigorated a reevaluation of the 
   process.
   (c) totally changed my life, dude! 

(3) Southern California now leads Seattle in
   (a) accumulated rainfall.
   (b) ingested cups of coffee. 
   (c) ridiculous first names for children. 

Answer Key

1) (a) So long, "Happy Hog Days" celebration. 
2) (b) So long, AnswersToSAT.com.
3) (a) So long, the hill over my back yard.